Hospital Delivers Extra Space To Maternity Ward

PEMBROKE PINES — Every so often, Memorial Hospital West is inundated with newborns.

The delivery ward must put out the word: take those pregnant women to a hospital with empty rooms, because our 24 obstetrics beds are full.

``We are right there at full capacity,'' said hospital Administrator Zeff Ross.

The crowding is set to end next year. The tax-assisted board that governs the hospital has approved a $22-million project to add 14 beds for moms in labor, to expand delivery areas and to create a separate emergency room for children.

The work also includes prior plans to add 36 general beds, with a half dozen of them to become a new pediatrics section.

The hospital, in the middle of fast-growing southwest Broward, has seen its births almost triple over the past four years to 3,100 annually. The obstetrics unit ran at 129 percent of capacity last year, forced to tap beds from other areas during peak times, Ross said.

At the same time, the entire hospital often is short of space, operating at 92 percent capacity in a county where more than half of hospital beds sit empty.

As a result, the state last month approved the 36-bed expansion, as part of a deal that allowed Cleveland Clinic and Tenet HealthCare Corp. to jointly build a new hospital in Weston.

The expansion will mean adding a fourth floor to Memorial West, at 703 N. Flamingo Rd., near Pines Boulevard. Kitchen areas also will be expanded. The obstetrics and expansion work is scheduled to be finished in late 1998, Ross said.

Creating the new pediatric emergency room follows a national trend toward keeping children out of hectic emergency settings with adults.

About one-quarter of the hospital's 43,000 emergency patients last year were children and the number continues to grow. The entire emergency area will be expanded and the new pediatric section will be done in kid-friendly decor.